Gail Ann said, ‘So this cage fighter might have bought his drugs from the bad guys who were keeping your kids prisoner.’
‘I think there could be a strong link. It’s a genuine subculture, cage fighting,’ Chloe said, wishing she’d paid more attention to Daniel’s article. ‘A sort of cross between transhumanism and showbiz.’
‘Are there girl fighters?’
‘Why not?’ Chloe said, even though she wasn’t sure.
‘Because I’m trying to think out a line of attack.’
‘You don’t have to write the article, just introduce yourself, say you’re thinking of doing a piece. Say you happen to know Fahad Chauhan, or drop his name somehow.’
‘Ask if they have a current address for him? Why would they?’
‘I’m wondering what else Fahad’s father sent back from Mangala. Whether Fahad ever sold this Max Predator anything, did he hang around the place, is he part of a fan base, and so on.’
Chloe’s hand was sweating on the phone. She was worried that Henry Harris would burst in and find her. Worried that the police or some reporter would get a fix on her. But she couldn’t pass up this chance to get ahead of Ada Morange’s machine, to give herself an edge, something she could use to negotiate a better deal. The quip about being an asset had stung hard.
Gail Ann said, ‘I’m looking at Maxie’s website right now. Ew.’
‘I’m not asking you to date him.’
‘According to this,’ Gail Ann said, ‘he’s part of a stable based at a gym in the Reef. Like he’s a racehorse.’
‘I know it isn’t much of a lead,’ Chloe said, ‘but it’s all I have right now. And listen, can you do this as soon as possible?’
‘Are you in trouble?’
‘I’m not sure. A little, maybe. I’m definitely kind of on the run. And there are other people looking for Fahad. Bad guys.’
‘I’ll get my Girl Reporter act over there now,’ Gail Ann said.
‘Be careful. If there are any suspicious characters hanging around, anyone who looks like the police, forget about it. Bail.’
‘Don’t worry about me. I’m having fun. And when this is over,’ Gail Ann said, ‘I’m going to sell the hell out this story. Try and stop me.’
26. Official Drunk
Mangala | 27–28 July
Vic took the boy detective to a joint everyone called the Belgian Pub, even though it was run by a Dutch couple. A small dark wood-panelled place that served all kinds of imported beers. They worked their way through several bottles of Lion Heart Stout and something called Feral Hop Hog that Skip championed, and Vic told the boy detective exactly why he’d fucked up with the consulate.
‘It’s politics. The UN and City Hall know the consulates are into all kinds of undercover shit. They’re looking out for the interests of their countries, various companies…The UN turns a blind eye to all that because it can’t keep the shuttle operations running without international cooperation. And City Hall doesn’t want to jeopardise the export market and piss off companies that have established factories here, bring in income and keep citizens in gainful employment. I know why you wanted to chase down that line of inquiry, but you’re going to have to forget about it.’
Skip was subdued after his run-in with the captain, but he wouldn’t let it go. ‘Look, I know I fucked up, but I also know that there’s a connection between Redway and those stowaways. Redway was zapped by a weapon known to have been used by McBride. The British consulate checked out the licence that McBride took out for an Elder Culture site, and a drawing of the site was found in that can. It could be, couldn’t it, that Parsons is hiding out in the consulate.’
‘If he is, you won’t be able to talk to him.’
‘A man was killed. Aren’t we supposed to find out who did it?’
‘Not if he died in the service of his country. The captain told you to ease up on the case, didn’t she? Well, that’s exactly what you’re going to do. And from now on, everything you do, you’re going to check with me first. You want to piss, you hold it in until I give you permission.’
But Skip wasn’t going to let it go easily. ‘I talked to drug enforcement about the shipping container. It was supposed to go to an address in Idunn’s Valley, but the address doesn’t exist. Someone sent it all the way from Earth to a place that isn’t on the map, and someone in the terminal checked it off. I was kind of hoping to sit in on interviews with the checkers, the people who track the containers from the point of unloading to their place in the stacks, and then onto the trucks that take them to their final destination. One of them was in on this thing for sure.’
The boy detective had a ragged, distracted look that Vic recognised: someone whose case was eating their life. He tried to explain how it worked, how some cases fell open at a touch, how others were real headbangers that refused to give up their secrets.
‘But the thing is, there are always more cases. We had more than six hundred murders in the city last year. Not to mention attempted murders, violent assaults, kidnapping, extortion…People come up, they think it’s the Wild West. Or the place drives them crazy. Six hundred murders, and we have fourteen investigators in the squad, basically doing triage. So when things don’t work out with one case, you don’t keep banging your head against it. You move on to the next. But that doesn’t mean we forget about the ones that got away. Sometimes, a year or two later, the doer will get drunk and confess to their partner. Or get religion and turn themselves in. Or they’ll get banged up for something else, boast about how they got away with murder to someone on their work gang who dibs them in exchange for a reduced sentence. Ask anyone on the squad,’ Vic said, ‘we all have a story like that. So here’s how it is with this one. While you’re waiting for Parsons to turn up, you need to be doing something else instead of getting into other people’s business.’
But he could see that Skip wasn’t listening. His second year on Mangala, Vic had been out on the playa and come across a research team that had trapped a stalker. A thin angular biomachine like a praying mantis crossed with a gazelle. It had rushed to and fro in the cage, battering against bars. Never letting up, never giving in. Skip was a little like that. He wasn’t ever going to give up on his whodunnit.
So Vic ordered another round and changed the topic. He talked about his time as a police constable in Birmingham back on Earth, walking the beat in a pointy helmet and carrying a truncheon instead of a gun — well, most of the time, there had been some serious riots in the long economic stagnation before the Spasm. Skip asked him if that was why he didn’t carry a gun now.
‘I carried a gun before I became a murder police. It really was like the Wild West in Petra, back in the day. But on this job the worst has already happened when we roll up. It’s about reading the scene. It’s about understanding people, not exchanging shots with them.’
‘You’ve been on the job a while, I guess.’
‘I’m seven years shy of my twenty, let’s put it that way.’
They got into talking about what they’d do after they retired. Vic told Skip that there were plenty of good security jobs for retired investigators. ‘I’m not talking about foot patrol in shopping malls. I have a good friend at the university, campus police,’ Vic said, and with a pang thought of his partner, Chris Okupe. Skip told him about his plan to do his twenty and buy a spread in Idunn’s Valley and raise sheep, finally said it was time to head home. Vic had a haphazard memory of moving on to another bar, of dancing with a woman to a jukebox playing Bruce Springsteen, but he woke alone in his bed in his bachelor efficiency, and had to drink about three litres of water and stand under a shower alternating between hot and cold until he felt even halfway human. He was getting old, was what it was. His aunties would be scandalised that he was approaching fifty and still lacked a family. Scandalised, but also righteously pleased that their prediction that no good would come of flying off to another world had proven to be absolutely correct.